The end of email conversation got going again this week when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told the audience at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference that only 11% of teens email daily:
“E-mail–I can’t imagine life without it–is probably going away,” she said.
With that I remember the 2006 prediction of the end of the wristwatch:
Have you looked at any kids lately?
I mean really looked at them.
Have you noticed anything different?
They don’t wear watches.
Really.
Ask someone under 25 for the time and they’ll pull out a cellphone.
If they do own a watch, they got it as a gift.
Young people aren’t buying them.
Gartner agreed: the demise of the wristwatch via podcast.
So I wonder, has the prediction come true? Do you wear a watch? You might remember the collectors edition Starbucks watch my nephew re-gifted to me. When the band broke I never bought a new one. Instead, I found myself doing what the kids do. And my phone is auto-synchronized with an atomic clock. I get the exact time.
While on the topic of tech shifts, at the All Things D Conference earlier this month Steve Jobs artfully suggested the iPad is a harbinger of an ‘uncomfortable’ transition to a post-PC world:
Jobs said the change from the PC is inevitable, but it’s a question of how long the transition will take.
“The transformation of the PC to new form factors like the tablet is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long ways,” Jobs said. “The PC is brilliant.. and we like to talk about the post-PC era, but it’s uncomfortable.”
He compared the migration to the U.S. automobile industry, and when most U.S. vehicles were trucks because they were driven by farmers. He said that cars became more popular as cities rose, and features like power steering and automatic transition were added over time. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” he said, noting that they will still be around, but will represent a smaller number of people.
The full, uncut video of the Jobs interview.
You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.